Tubi Tuesday: Deranged
Only a skilled hand should be allowed to adapt Ed Gein
Handyman, murderer, and fashion designer Ed Gein looms large in the horror world. A stark raving mad lunatic with a nipple belt and a penchant for digging up the recently deceased? He’s the inspiration for Norman Bates and Leatherface —among others— and somehow comes out scarier than both of them. Truth, I suppose, it’s much scarier than fiction.
Deranged, a 1974 film directed by Jeff Gillen and Allan Ormsby, was an attempt to bring Gein to the big screen, promising to scare viewers like they’d never been scared before. Unfortunately, the only people scared by this movie are those who have never seen a moving picture before. The movie is more dark comedy than horror, more slapstick than terrifying.
That’s not to say the movie is all bad. Roberts Blossom, the Gein stand-in, plays the murderer in a creepy, over-the-top way that’s very unsettling. You almost think he might be a local crazy man they found rather than a professional actor. The former was confirmed years later when he played the creepy neighbor in Home Alone.
What Deranged solidifies for me is that some stories can only be told by competent filmmakers. This movie lays everything out at the beginning: his mother was an overbearing misogynist with an apocalyptic flair, he was an Oedipal son who couldn’t let her go, and the combination of those two things created a killer. There’s no tension leading the viewer along, forcing them to keep watching to find out what happens.
Compare that to Psycho, where the tension strung along for an hour or more before you get any relief. It’s almost like Alfred Hitchcock knows how to make a good movie and isn’t just using shlock to exploit the viewer.
Anyway, watch Deranged at your next bad movie night. It’s funny and oddly compelling, if not scary. The pea soup scene is worth the price of admission.